Hey, what's up, Toby? We made it in another week.
It is the process step podcast. We have a topic
to discuss. As usual. And it's correct. And it
is distraction. What's that now? It's distraction.
Yeah. What again? Come again. I was sorry. We
were talking about what? The word attention span
says what? Yeah Distraction oh my god, is that
not the case since I mean it was bad before kovat,
but in our post kovat world you know whether
it's laundry going off in the back or Amazon
dropping off packages or cats walking across
screens. It feels like the world is out to distract
us. Oh for sure So it's interesting because I've
been I've been sitting in a lot of meeting meetings
Yeah, and I realized that So many people are
just not paying attention With their with their
with their screens on are you talking about live
meetings old school old school meetings You're
kind of you're kind of well actually probably
both but like specifically like the zoom zoom
the zoom meetings where it's so, so easy to just
get distracted. Like, oh, email. Oh, Slack. Oh,
Teams. Oh, Zoom. Oh, something. Oh, that person
said, you know, let's see if we can get my buddy
to laugh. Send him a text message. Like, better.
We're just having, which is a fun game to play
sometimes, but also can get you in big trouble.
What? It feels and you know for so many for so
many folks working in an office environment We
often spend half our day or better in meetings,
right? I Just don't even how many hours a day
do you think people spend in meetings? I would
I would be shocked if it's not over five Yeah,
I often hear So I, I Googled that really quick.
It's, it's saying two and a half hours per day
for a standard five day work week. Two and a
half. Yeah. In the nineties, it was two and a
half hours. Right. Maybe that's where I, I need
to double check that maybe where my Google search
engine is focused. You know, what's so funny
is we're talking about abstraction, right? And
what did you do? You just swore. God it's but
that's a perfect example, right? Let me look
it up Yeah, but that's it's one more example
It's not just stuff dinging but our access to
information and knowing it's really just a click
away We don't have to speculate we can actually
well, we can let Google speculate but You're
right, you know, there's so many things pulling
us off topic. So why does distraction matter
to you though? I thought you know, usually you
and I love going everywhere, but our chosen topic.
And today with distraction being the topic, I
feel like we have to be on task. That's funny.
It's, you know, it's interesting. Like, you know,
if we were to actually run a non -distracted
meeting, like, what would that look like? And
I, you know, what's, what's interesting and what
I've been kind of what I've been noodling on
is like, we have these, we have standard meetings.
Uh, we have these standard meetings. And I think
oftentimes we necessarily know what the meetings
are for. Or they're not, they're just so generic
that it's hard to track. Or the worst thing is
you just do the same thing over and over again
and nothing ever gets better. I also, the other
element I'd add to it is not knowing what our
role is in the meeting. But you're right. So
we haven't set a very attractive table that we
then invite people to come spend often half their
day sitting in a series of meetings that are
without purpose and without accountabilities
and expectations. What could go wrong? Maybe
one of the reasons, okay, so this is off topic
a little bit, but also very timely because we're
talking about meetings and the lack of focus.
One of my buddies and I have been talking about
a very, like a, having a sitcom that's called
The Meeting. And everything about the sitcom
is that everything leads up to the meeting. So
the meetings for the meetings, you know, the
memes that happened before the meetings. All
of the things that lead up to the meeting, but
at the end of every episode, you walk into the
meeting, but you never end up in the meeting.
And then the next day, the next day is the aftermath,
or the next episode is the aftermath of the meeting,
leading to the next meeting. I think it would
be really funny. I want to be a writer on your
sitcom. I mean, it has a very kind of office
flavor. Oh, totally. And how relatable is that
very thing? I will say that the endless hours
of meetings or getting ready for meetings that
may or may not be relevant for us that we're
expected to attend, it does give rise to some
innovative ideas like you knew sitcom, right?
But I... The other element that it brings to
bear for me is that for most folks that are working
in an office in a W -2 job, a lot of it is this
expectation we have to log eight hours still.
It's not about outcomes. It's really about punching
a clock, literally or figuratively. And so if
you're serving your eight hours each day in exchange
for a paycheck, then The question is, what is
the value of the time that I'm surrendering in
exchange for the monies? And what am I getting
out of it? If the organization isn't making good
use of our energies, then all we're really doing
is clocking time. So why wouldn't we surf around
and dream up new sitcoms, for example? There
you go. Well, what's interesting is like, you
know, last week we talked about Vibecoding and
Generadance, AI, and it's very good at generating.
It may not be very good at being decisive. We're
deciding. And I think one of the habits that
we've gained is probably the wrong word. The
bad habits that we've adopted unintentionally
has been to generate these meetings. and not
have them lead to decisions or decisiveness,
or even know what they're for. Because the problem
that we had with COVID is you needed that human
connection. And so we've confused connection
with decisiveness and business, like making decisions
and moving stuff forward. It's a worrisome thought
when in the broader marketplace. I know very
strong mid -career folks that have been six,
eight, 10 months since being part of a layoff
over the last 12 to 24 months. Just strange times
and sometimes even more peculiar than at other
phases of our careers. As you and I sit here
on straddling, one of us on each side of 50 and
I say it that way because I feel a little younger
when I frame it that way. So it's not new. We've
been in this market for 25 plus years, give or
take. And yet, to your very point, it does feel
a little bit like these cuts that we see big
organizations going through. It's almost like
they're in search of focus again, and they know
that they're not getting the outcomes they need.
but they're also not in a position to kind of
channel that focus. And it's almost like they
haven't been able to put their finger on it.
And I think you just nailed it that work has
become a social outcome, which it's probably
always been. And that's always been one of the
people I enjoy is the people I work with. But
that sense of shared purpose is a little murky
at times. You know, we get fragmented and the
bigger the company, the more fragmented we can
become. with each of us in our small tribes.
Well, let me bring that back to this point of
easily distracted. And you also brought up vibe
coding again, which I think is really brilliant.
Before the show, we were talking about the old
school term being RPA, right? Robotic Process
Automation. But modern AI solutions are allowing
us to create a set of coded instructions really,
and start to automate some repetitive process.
And it's not just the technologists. Oh, for
sure. Well, the interesting thing is like, we,
like as we become more, as we become more efficient
in our day jobs, we still have eight hours to
feed or eight hours to sell. Feed. We can feed
it. Right. Feed it however it works. The interesting
thing for me is emailing has gotten so much easier
because I'm not the most eloquent speaker nor
writer and the ability to write a very nice email
is fabulous and it's also made my writing worse.
Like, I don't know, I don't know if, I don't
know if you've, you've noticed that, but like,
I'll write, I'll write something. And I've just
become so dependent on Grammarly or, or one of
the GPTs to write it in a way that sounds really
good. And it's great. But I, I feel like, you
know, like it's one of those unintended side
effects of, you know, just like we had distraction
going into COVID, one of the unintended side
effects of these AIs is that like, We lose our
sharpness Yeah, it's it's kind of like Replacing
handwritten notes or documents with typed documents
Yeah, and then people's handwriting becomes completely
illegible like everybody's a everybody's a position
all the sudden, you know, oh Yeah, I think you
I think you raise a couple interesting points
and I'd like to talk more about how we bring
these together. So one is this idea of distraction.
And so the loss of the discipline around being
focused and present in meetings. But then you
also bring up this this kind of adjacent idea
of the more that technology is prepared to communicate
on my behalf, not even as a means to communication,
but actually crafting the message in a more eloquent
way. Then we also lose our sharpness there. And
so With the landscape changing as fast as it
is, it makes me think about, maybe the real question
is, what are those underlying habits that serve
us well, regardless of the stage in our career?
What are those areas where we need to work individually,
but also with our teams to stay sharp, to really
be effective as the landscape changes? What comes
to mind? Yeah, one of the things that I've been
thinking about is like, let's just scribe. Have
a scribe for the meeting and make sure that it's
always a different person. You know, like move
around. And at the beginning, like at the beginning
of the meeting, Hey, you're, you're the scribe
and they're just going to document what happened
in the meeting. And at the end, let's just get
a feedback from your scribe on like what the
big things were. Make sure that you've got coherence
and figure out at the end, like, are there any
action items? Yes, yeah or nay. Do you want to
do them? Do you not want to do them? My guess
is by forcing that sort of discipline in the
meeting, you might actually have less meetings
because people don't want to be scribes. But
you also would realize that in most meetings,
there's a lot of action items that get thrown
out that may or may not even be important. Chris,
I love that. Now, the very first thought as you
say that, that what comes to mind is I go, well,
Zoom will auto transcribe every things. And another
you and I are familiar with is one called Fathom,
which will just follow us from meeting to meeting
and capture all of our notes. So talk to link
up this idea of of assigning the scribe task
to this idea of habits that that create that
value. Yeah. Why is that in mind? I think. I
think we have longer meetings, our meetings instead
of five -minute meetings or 15 -minute meetings,
because everybody's distracted. And so if you
force different individuals to be focused in
a meeting, you will, and this should be experimental,
so if any listeners are doing this, just let
us know. But if you had a scribe, it's going
to force at least that one person When it's your
turn, and it should be everybody, leader, it
doesn't matter, right? Your leader shouldn't
always lead the meetings, but, but it's going
to force every person to realize that most of
this meeting was useless or will for it would
be a forcing function to make, make meetings
better. That's what we should do. We should get
hats and say, make meetings great again. That's
exactly what we should do. Yes. I would love
to say that some of the most effective meetings
I have in any given week are in fact a half hour
meeting. And it's a low frequency, high value
instead of high frequency, low value. I sometimes
more throughput in a half hour meeting simply
because of the scarcity. And I feel like in what
does feel like an overabundance of time. The
world is full of people saying, I can barely
keep up with my day. But if you extracted low
value tasks, like just simply attending a meeting
instead of having time to be focused on the things
you're accountable for, that might be different.
I think a lot of the innovation that technology
improves isn't innovation on behalf of the company's
mission. It's dreaming up new and better sitcoms
or it's technical innovation just for the sake
of exploration, right? And so if organizations
are feeling like they're not deriving the value
from their workforce that they should, then it
feels a little bit like they need to reassess
some of their cultural dynamics. So love this
habit about how do you expect people, how do
you refocus people on practicing the habit of
engagement and staying on point. Yeah. You know,
what's funny is like one of the tricks that I've
done, especially when it's a big organization,
because oftentimes like that seems to be a fallback,
like, Oh, I'm so busy. Right. And sometimes using
this becomes this thing. Like sometimes you can
ask for like a two week sprint on daily 15 minute
meetings. And that has been like, especially
when you're working among devs and you've got
dependencies on other teams. I've been incredibly
affected just saying, Hey, look, I just need
15 minutes of your brain. Because, you know,
sometimes the GPT is not going to be able to
figure out what's going on inside of a corporation.
And so I did it actually quite a bit when I was
standing up a brand new internal UI. Like people
would not, would not give me any time. Like I
couldn't actually go and steal everybody. But
when I said, Hey, look, I just need someone 15
minutes a week. No work, no action items out
of it, but I just need to borrow their brain
because, because the GPT was not going to read
their brain. And it was amazing. It was amazing
how effective and how unblocked I could get my
dev teams just by getting, borrowing someone
who actually had deep domain experience in something
that the GPT would never touch. Right. Because
that's, you know, still like. Sometimes effectiveness
can be, you know, making, making it more kind.
Sometimes it can be time boxing. Yeah. I love
that. In the, in the spirit of better habits.
Yeah. Right. Well, time is the scarce, the scarce
commodity that we have. Yeah. Even when we, we
sell it in what feels like these enormous blocks,
right? The days are long and the years are short.
So. I think this notion of purpose is also an
element maybe that's drifted. That idea of if
you're fortunate enough to work in an organization
where there's a very clear mission, and I have
over the years, different times, worked with
very mission -driven companies, it's a nice thing
that you experience there where people are brought
back to the real purpose. I'm the first to say,
sometimes it can be a bit much, you know, if
every meeting is open with what is our mission.
And yet it's that kind of intention that builds
habits, right? It repeated and consistent practice
that results in these habits that are effective
enough to carry the day. So, yeah. Yeah. Very
cool, man. We made it through another one. We'll
pick it up next week. I'd love to hear about
it. Yeah. Drop us a note. Yeah, that's great.
See ya.